Perfect Solution: Large Exhibits / Aviaries / Exhibit mammals!

[Jeminyne]

There's a lot of discussion on how hard it might be to include species in Planet Zoo, including certain tree-dwelling animals, and species too small to be in normal habitats but too big to be in an exhibit box. For instance, sloths spend almost ALL of their time in trees. Habitat animals are programmed to spend most of their time on the ground, and the sloths would look silly crawling around on the ground. Marmosets are TINY and are contained in aviary-type exhibits in most real zoos. Large reptiles like anacondas would also look silly in a fenced enclosure, but the exhibits we have are too small for them. Furthermore, the idea of flying birds being added to Planet Zoo is a hot topic, because we don't even have diving in the game yet. Flying in a 3D space might be even harder.

Well I was thinking about the exhibit animals in game. And I think a bigger, slightly more complex version of exhibits would be the perfect blanket solution for all these animals. The exhibits would need to have more variety in size, and what they look like, (a caged/netted aviary for eagles would look different than a glass exhibit for caimans,) but I think they could use the same method for how the animals appear and behave.

They could have simple roaming animations where they wander from one side of the exhibit to the next, flitter from one branch to the next, and so on. They wouldn't need eating, playing, and sleeping animations like habitat animals do, but would move more than the small exhibit animals. Maybe they could be capable of climbing and perching on things we put in the exhibit, and swimming where we add water. But I'd be happy if that's the ONLY thing they could do. They could otherwise act like small exhibit animals, not needing a juvenile stage or the complexities that habitat animals do. It would be cool if we could customize the shape and size of the enclosures, piecing squares of them together like construction units.

Maybe they could all technically be "exhibit animals," there'd just be three kinds of exhibits:

• Small exhibits (for the animals we have in them already: insects, small reptiles, etc.)
• Large exhibits (larger tanks for animals like caimans, anacondas, Chinese giant salamander, Japanese spider crab?)
• Aviary/Netted exhibits (for flying birds and small/tree climbing mammals. Sloths, marmosets, bats!)

(related: I also think it would be great to have optional "netting" construction pieces, that we could drape over our primate habitats for extra realism!)

Let me know your thoughts! The Smithsonian Zoo's small mammal house also shows some great examples for potential species:

 

[DrBurrito]

Nice brainstorming! I have thought about similar ideas and have gone through the same thought process. Even made a detailed text document about the possibilities and different ways to tackle the same topic and finally came to the conclusion that adding just a single (larger but same height) glass exhibit for reptiles like dwarf caimans/large freshwater turtles/green anaconda is actually sufficient when you consider the endless possibilities netting will provide.

The option to have netting (and a possible netting DLC), will let us house a whole bunch of new birds and simians that wasn't possible before. Plus give the anti-climbing option for existing ones like lemurs a new meaning - San Diego Zoo is a good example for lemurs. As for your concerns that animals like sloths and small primates looking silly on the ground, all they need to do is set very small ground area requirements but much more climbable space and the already present jumping animations from climbable item to climbable item will let them jump from tree to tree etc. And in the case of sloths a new animation to pass over from one tree to the next if placed close enough. This way smaller arboreal animals would rarely come down and thus look more natural. Perhaps this was why they named a certain feeder arboreal.

These smaller "space filler" habitat animals (terrestrial and arboreal alike) are what we need in the game right now imo. I have somewhat mentioned that in my Scientific Feedback thread.

If they are to add a third glass type exhibit, I'd suggest one for smaller animals like poison dart frogs and inverts so they are easier to spot in an exhibit. To tackle height issues, they can make them half or a quarter the height and stackable to fit four meter ceilings perfectly or simply make them have 2/4 exhibits on top of each other per exhibit model by default. A third option would be to have them have a modern asymmetric design by having the total "metal area" have the same height (4m) but have the glass portion (the actual exhibit) placed irregularly on the said metal column - having two versions with the exhibit being slightly closer to the top in one and slightly closer to the ground in the other.

At the end of the day, we are lucky to have such a creative dev team and I think they have thought about most of these possibilities. I am excited to see what time will unfold!